mwolson

CachyOS Gaming Quick Start

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Contents

Installing CachyOS

Before You Start

Make especially sure to do these steps:

  • Boot into Windows and do this in an Administrator PowerShell to turn off Fast Startup, since it can interfere with the ability of CachyOS to sleep automatically after some time: 
    powercfg /h off
  • Just in case there are any disk errors that Windows doesn’t know about yet, run chkdsk /f in a Windows Administrator PowerShell to start fixing them and then reboot Windows twice to complete the fixes (because Microsoft reasons).

Other prep work:

  • If you have multiple hard drives, write down the amount of space used and free space on each, so it’s easy to identify which one you’re installing to.
  • Download the latest CachyOS Desktop Edition installer↗ image, along with Ventoy bootable USB tool↗. Use Ventoy to format a USB drive and then copy the CachyOS installer image onto that USB drive.
  • If you have a Windows DVD/USB around just in case something goes wrong, that will be helpful, otherwise you can find a Windows rescue image of some kind and copy it onto the Ventoy drive to add it as a menu option there.
  • As another option if something goes wrong: the CachyOS installer is also a live Linux distro, so you can run different commands and programs there and just close the installer.

During Installation

  • Let it use KDE Plasma as the default desktop environment.
  • Let it choose BTRFS as the default filesystem, since that one has nice features like automatic compression to reduce file size.
  • When asked about a bootloader, choose grub2 since it’s the one most likely to work on all hardware while giving you the option to boot back into Windows on system start.
  • When you’ve rebooted and chosen the CachyOS option and let your system boot up, continue with the following.
  • Note: If the computer booted you into Windows instead and didn’t show the boot menu, and you have a 2nd hard drive, you may need to go into the BIOS and change the hard drive boot order.

Post-Installation Setup

Welcome Popup Tweaks

After you’ve booted into CachyOS successfully you’ll see a desktop with a CachyOS Hello welcome popup. On that popup I’d recommend clicking the Apps/Tweaks button and ensuring that only the following boxes are checked at the top:

  • Ananicy Cpp enabled
  • Bpftune enabled
  • Bluetooth enabled
  • Profile-sync-daemon enabled

You can also click on:

  • Install Gaming packages - get a head start on later instructions.
  • Install Snapper support - allow automatic snapshots to be taken after system upgrades; you can later use System → Btrfs Assistant to get an audit log of what changed on both your home folder and the system and restore to an earlier state if need be.
  • Rank mirrors - find the closest mirror of CachyOS which will speed up system updates and new package downloads.

When you’re done with that, go ahead and close the CachyOS Hello popup and we’ll start locating things on the desktop.

Locate an Editor and Terminal

The big “C” icon on the bottom left of the screen is your Start menu. If you go to Development → Kate, that is a decent graphical editor, and it will automatically ask you for permission to edit privileged files. If you need an editor within the Terminal, micro is good, use Ctrl+g to display help text about what the keys do; use sudo micro to edit privileged files.

Aside: sudo is a command to run things as the most privileged user on the system, named root.

The default Terminal will be System → Alacritty. It only supports one tab/window, so more options will be mentioned later in this tutorial.

How to Install Other Things

There are two main commandline programs for installing and upgrading software in CachyOS. The first is Pacman, which manages the software that gets first-class support from Arch Linux, which CachyOS is based on. The second is Paru, which manages less-trusted software that the wider community provides. The same commandline options tend to work on both, and Paru is also able to install everything that Pacman can, so I usually just run Paru for everything once I’ve installed it.

In general, these commands might prompt you for your password in order to temporarily get those root privileges. They may also prompt about continuing with installation; you can type y to proceed. Paru will prompt about reviewing the packages it installs, you can hit q once it brings up the review to close that and move on with installation.

As a first step, install Paru using the terminal.

pacman -Sy paru

To upgrade the entire system (go ahead and do this):

paru

You may need to do that if you get any package not found problems in the future, since new packages come out fairly quickly.

For future reference: to install one or more packages:

paru -Sy package-one package-two ...

For future reference: to remove one or more packages:

paru -R package-one package-two ...

Finding packages:

  • I usually just Google “arch [name of thing]” to figure out the package name. If the hit is on Arch Linux core packages↗ it’s a core package, otherwise if it’s on Arch User Repository (AUR)↗ then it’s on the community package repo. Either way Paru can install it once you know its name.
  • You can also use System → Octopi to get a GUI to search, install, upgrade, and remove packages

Paru and Pacman are capable of doing more, but I usually just search for that if I need to.

Install a Better Terminal

If you want a terminal that has multiple tabs, and looks like the new Microsoft Terminal or iterm2 (Mac), do paru -Sy tabby-bin to install Tabby↗. It’s also available on Mac and Windows.

A different terminal that’s more trendy with technical folks but doesn’t have a nice UI for changing settings is Ghostty↗: paru -Sy ghostty

Locate a File Explorer

The default file explorer is named Dolphin, it will be the folder icon on the bottom left of the screen. It might already have entries on the bottom of the left pane for your Windows drives, which can be handy if there are files you want to copy over.

It’s also a good idea to choose “Show Hidden Files”.

Locate Settings

The icon to change settings is also on the bottom left of the screen, you may have to hover over it to be sure of its name.

Open Settings → Keyboard, change these to turn off some keys that could take you out of the game in WoW:

  • Key Bindings → Shortcuts
    • Dolphin → disable Meta+E
    • Emoji Selector → disable all
    • KRunner → KRunner → disable Alt+Space
    • System Monitor → disable Meta+Esc
    • KWin → Kill Window → disable Meta+Ctrl+Esc
    • KWin → Peek at Desktop → disable Meta+D
    • There are a few others you could turn off if you hit them by accident

Some other settings you may want to change:

  • Keyboard
    • NumLock on Startup → Turn On
    • Set Delay to about 350ms, Rate to 30 repeats/s (or according to your preferences)
  • Display & Monitor
    • If on a 4k monitor: Scale to 225% (or 250% if that still looks small)
    • Uncheck Screen tearing
    • Change Adaptive Sync to Never - this disables VRR, which is helpful if you notice the monitor flickering and want it to stop
    • If you enable HDR, tweak its settings to match your preferences; I usually take “sRGB color intensity” all the way down to 0.
    • If the HDR looks washed out or wrong even after adjusting the settings, sometimes a better HDMI cable can help, even if it’s currently working on Windows.
  • Accessibility → Shake Cursor → Disable
  • Colors & Themes → Global Theme
    • Plasma Style → Breeze Dark
    • Splash Screen → Get New → Colourful Ring Plasma6 → Install Theme
    • Login Screen (SDDM)
      • Breeze → Change background image to /usr/share/wallpapers/Next/contents/images_dark/5120x2880.png
      • Apply Plasma Settings
  • Application Permissions → Legacy X11 app support → “Only the Meta, Control, Alt, Shift keys” (needed for Discord push-to-talk keys to work, assuming you use one of those keys for push-to-talk)
  • Autostart
    • If you want some of your programs like Steam to start automatically when CachyOS boots, add them here

Second Desktop

You can make a 2nd desktop by hovering on the top-left smart corner and choosing Add Desktop. Then right-click on the desktop widget (the big empty boxes on the bottom right of the desktop next to the “C” menu and Settings icon) and choose Show Numbers so it’s easier to see which desktop you’re on.

I like to run games in the 2nd desktop so that if I hit Alt+Tab by accident it’s faster to get back into the game. You can use Ctrl+Win+Left and Ctrl+Win+Right to switch desktops, or click on the desktop widget.

Sound and Other Improvements

Configure pipewire (the sound system) for better latency:

  • paru -Sy realtime-privileges
  • sudo usermod -a -G realtime $USER

Other changes:

  • Run this to allow games to run as a higher priority than other things on the system: sudo usermod -a -G games $USER
  • Enable bluetooth: sudo systemctl enable --now bluetooth.service and then pair any devices such as mice, keyboards, and headphones

You may want to reboot after this to make the usermod changes take effect.

If the sound or your microphone gets unexpectedly scratchy, especially after waking up from hibernation, try this in a Terminal to restart just the services responsible for sound - you don’t need to reboot to do this:

systemctl --user restart pipewire.service
systemctl --user restart pipewire-pulse.service

Screen Magnifier

Use Meta-+ to magnify the screen and Meta-0 to return the zoom amount to normal. This is helpful, for example, when setting up FFXIV since the custom launcher is unreadable on 4k screens.

Automounting Drives

If you have an old Windows partition (or other thumb drive) that you want to always have mounted:

  • Run Dolphin
  • Mount the drive using Dolphin
  • Run mount and look for the entry with that drive
  • Run mkdir /mnt/c (change the c part to something more descriptive if this is athumb drive)
  • Update /etc/fstab (you’ll need root access to edit it) to add an entry with the device ID and the options that were shown in mount, and the /mnt/c or similar location for where to mount it; the existing entries can show you examples of how to order it.
  • Feel free to review the CachyOS Automount Guide↗ on the CachyOS Wiki for additional help and ideas as necessary.

Apps

Browsers

  • paru -Sy brave-bin - get the Brave browser to block ads automatically while still keeping Chrome features.
  • paru -Sy vivaldi vivaldi-ffmpeg-codecs - Chrome-based browser that has better vertical tabs if you like those. It also has configurable ad-blocking. I like this theme for it: https://themes.vivaldi.net/themes/NOb71LX8J1g↗ .
  • paru -Sy firefox - get the Firefox browser as a backup in case there are any websites (Netflix in my case) that don’t currently work well on Brave on CachyOS.
  • paru -Sy google-chrome - install Google Chrome

Make sure to disable the password prompts that Kwallet asks for when you start a browser:

  • Start menu, search and open kwalletmanager, settings menu, configure kwallet. Then Access Control tab at top, uncheck “prompt when an application accesses a wallet”.

Discord

It’s as simple as: paru -Sy discord

Installing Steam and Wine

This is a prerequisite for getting WoW to work.

  • paru -Sy cachyos-gaming-meta linux-firmware lutris protontricks wine-mono
  • Follow the Steam setup instructions at CachyOS gaming wiki↗, but don’t enable Shader Pre-Caching since it makes games take forever to start on a desktop computer.
    • I’d recommend using Lutris and not worrying about Bottles or Heroic Games Launcher yet.
    • Also don’t do their “game-performance” step on the above linked instructions page since it isn’t needed on a desktop computer.

Now do the following as well:

  • Make sure xdg-desktop-portal-gtk is NOT installed, since it can mess up Steam font scaling: paru -R xdg-desktop-portal-gtk
  • Launch Lutris
    • Wine → Folder icon - You don’t need to change anything here yet, but this is where you can download different versions of Wine or Proton if you need to
    • Wine → Settings → Runner Options → Wine Version → proton-cachyos
    • Wine → Settings → Runner Options → Set DPI Scaling to 225 or 240 if you’re on a 4k dispaly, otherwise leave unchecked
    • Wine → Settings → System Options → Disable Gamescope
    • Wine → Settings → System Options → CPU -> Disable Feral GameMode
    • Wine → Settings → System Options → Environment → Set these (consult the CachyOS gaming wiki↗ for the most up-to-date settings and an explanation of what they do)
      • PROTON_ENABLE_WAYLAND → 0
      • PROTON_LOCAL_SHADER_CACHE → 0
      • PROTON_NO_WM_DECORATION → 1
      • PROTON_VERB → waitforexitandrun
      • UMU_RUNTIME_UPDATE → 0

WoW

  • Assuming that you’ll want CurseForge, Warcraft Logs Uploader, and WowUp, they will need appimagelauncher is a prerequisite so that you can auto-update them:
    • paru -Sy appimagelauncher
    • mkdir -p ~/Applications
  • Download the Linux version for each the following and move to ~/Applications to install:
  • Open Lutris, do Add Program → Battle.Net
  • Make the ~/lutris folder and create ~/lutris/world-of-warcraft.yaml with these contents: 
    description: For existing install of Battle.net
game_slug: world-of-warcraft
gogslug: ""
humblestoreid: ""
installer_slug: world-of-warcraft-battlenet
name: World of Warcraft
notes: "- Instructions for proper functionality of Battle.Net (+ common
  problems)\r\
  \nhttps://github.com/lutris/docs/blob/master/Battle.Net.md\r\n- Instructions
  WOW\
  \
  troubleshouting:\r\nhttps://github.com/lutris/docs/blob/master/WorldOfWarcraft.md"
runner: wine
script:
  game:
    arch: win64
    args: --exec="launch WoW"
    exe: drive_c/Program Files (x86)/Battle.net/Battle.net.exe
    prefix: $GAMEDIR
  requires: battlenet-standard
  system:
    env:
      DXVK_HUD: compiler
      DXVK_STATE_CACHE_PATH: $GAMEDIR
      STAGING_SHARED_MEMORY: 1
      __GL_SHADER_DISK_CACHE: 1
      __GL_SHADER_DISK_CACHE_PATH: $GAMEDIR
      __GL_SHADER_DISK_CACHE_SKIP_CLEANUP: 1
  wine:
    battleye: false
    eac: false
    fsr: false
slug: world-of-warcraft-battlenet
steamid: null
version: Battle.net
year: 2004
  • In Lutris do ”+” Menu → Install from a local install script → Enter ~/lutris/world-of-warcraft.yaml and click through the prompts
  • In both Battle.Net and World of Warcraft:
    • If on a 4k monitor: Wine icon → Run Wine Configuration → Graphics → Set DPI to 225 or 240 (~2.5x)
    • Note for later: Runner Options → If the launcher won’t update correctly at some point, try temporarily changing this to: GE-Proton (latest) if it’s present, otherwise lutris-GE-Proton . Once the launcher has updated, this can be changed back to the default.
  • Go ahead and launch WoW from within Lutris. It also works to right-click on it and choose to create a desktop shortcut, and then launch the desktop shortcut.
  • Open Warcraft Logs Uploader and use the log directory /home/my-user/Games/battlenet/drive_c/Program Files (x86)/World of Warcraft/__retail__/Logs/ (replace “my-user” with your username)
  • From Lutris WoW documentation↗
    • Try running /console Option worldPreloadNonCritical 0 in-game to make zones load in faster
    • Also see this WoW settings post↗ for some settings suggestions

FFXIV

Set up xivlauncher-rb:

  • Install FFXIV using Steam
  • Install xivlauncher-rb (which we may have already done earlier)

Settings (replace my-user with your username):

  • Game → Set Game Path to /home/my-user/.local/share/Steam/steamapps/common/FINAL FANTASY XIV Online
  • Wine → Pick the latest Unofficial version, click Download Now
  • Wine → Enable FSync
  • On a 4k screen: Wine → Open Wine Configuration → Graphics (use magnifier to read things if need be) → Set DPI to 225 or 240 (~2.5x)
  • DXVK → Pick the latest version without async, click Download Now
  • DXVK → Uncheck Enable DXVK ASYNC
  • DXVK → Set DXVK Overlay to None
  • DXVK → Set Frame Rate Limit to 121

Now you should be able to run FFXIV from xivlauncher-rb to get the best results.

OneDrive

There are several options:

  • Open OneDrive’s website from a browser and just download or upload what you need
  • paru -Sy onedrive-abraunegg liblphobos ldc onedrivegui-git and then run OneDriveGUI.

Office Documents and PDF Preview

  • paru -Sy calligra okular

Further Reading

  • Performance improvements: CachyOS system tweaks↗
    • Disabling split-lock mitigate is very fast but also makes the OS a bit less secure; for a home system you may still want to do it.
    • Some of the AMD optimizations may be helpful if you have an AMD CPU.
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